Boot from Media

Setup the Live Environment to use SSH

Note: The following commands should be executed as the root user. The # prompt has intentionally been omitted from the code lines to allow for a trivial copy/paste into the target box.

One should be presented with the root prompt [root@archiso ~]# at this point.

Firstly, setup the network on the target machine:

aif -p partial-configure-network

It will present you with a list of known interface; type in the interface you would like to use (eg: eth0 for wired Ethernet interface)

Secondly, sync the live environment to a mirror, install the openssh package, and start it:

Note: This is not required. The install media already comes with openssh installed

pacman -Syy openssh
rc.d start sshd

Note: Depending on the age of the install media, pacman may complain that it should be upgraded first. Since the goal is to simply install the openssh package, it s recommended to deny this request and simply install the single package.

Finally, setup a root password which is needed for an ssh connection; the default arch password for root is empty.

passwd

Connect to the Target PC via SSH

Connect to the target machine via the following command:

$ ssh root@ip.address.of.target

From here one is presented with live environment's the welcome message and is able to administer the target machine as-if sitting at the physical keyboard.

Notes

If the target machine is behind a firewall/router, the default ssh port of 22 will obviously need to be forward to the target machine's LAN IP address. The use of port forwarding is not covered in this guide.

One can edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the live environment prior to starting the daemon for example to run on a non-standard port if desired.

Next Steps

The sky is the limit. If the intent is to simply install Arch from the live media, run /arch/setup. If the intent is to edit an existing Linux install that got broken, follow the Install from Existing Linux wiki article.

Manually partition the target HDD/SDD using the gdisk utility installed via pacman -S gdisk before starting the arch installer and when presented with the option to install a boot loader in the installation framework, simply answer no and drop back to the live environment's root prompt.

Installation of grub2 is trivial at this point. Simply chroot into the fresh arch install (default pre-mounted if coming out of the installer) then install and setup grub2: